The State Chancellery invites women in “short dresses” to the reception. The protocol formula doesn’t have much to do with the height of the border, but some invitees still find the antiquated information suggestive.
On Monday afternoon, Veronika Kammerer is on her way to the train, and according to her own information, she is wearing trousers and a blouse. For once, this is not completely unimportant, because the Altötting architect and interior designer is on her way to Munich, where a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Bavarian Chamber of Architects will take place in the Residenz in the evening. The Prime Minister personally invited, and the card from the State Chancellery reads “Dark suit” and “Short dress” as a reference to the expected clothing. Veronika Kammerer would probably not have noticed that with the dark suit, but the one with the short dress seemed “a bit sexist” to her. She likes to wear short dresses, she says, “but not when someone tells me to.”
Of course, the State Chancellery did not mean all of this literally. A spokesman assures us that the ladies should “of course also appear in trouser suits, in an elegant costume or in dresses of any length”. Because the “short dress” is – regardless of its actual length – above all not a long dress, which in turn would be a code for a classic evening dress. And if the protocol were to recommend such an evening dress for women, then the men should not only appear in a dark suit, but rather in a tuxedo or even in a tailcoat. The “short dress”, so it is said from the State Chancellery, is in any case “a common standard formulation for an evening dress code”.
In fact, the cipher has been used for decades, but for Veronika Kammerer that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should go on like this in the 21st century. And if Kammerer considers the statement to be “out of date at all”, then it is not the first and only one. For example, at the inauguration of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2017, the protocol asked for a dark suit and short dress as usual, whereupon the CDU member of the Bundestag Nadine Schön asked via Twitter how short the dress should, should or should be.
And so Veronika Kammerer is also hoping for more up-to-date information in the future. Because, strictly literally, the formula offers “no possibility of interpretation at all”. For her, short means up to above the knee, says Kammerer, which also contradicts protocol usages. Renate Tomberg, the long-standing protocol expert at the Federal President’s Office, wrote to the trade journal two years ago textile + fashion explains that a “short dress” means a “straight knee-length dress”. In the evening, the length could also be “up to half a calf” or even all the way down, and yes: with an “elegant trouser suit or a suit” a woman is also properly dressed. So Veronika Kammerer is definitely on the right track on Monday, and she could also wear a dark suit. Because who should wear the dress and who should wear the suit is not listed.